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The Missing Exit Strategy for Afghanistan
President Obama said it best when he talked about U.S. policy in Afghanistan on the CBS news program 60 Minutes last month: "There's got to be an exit strategy".
Well, there isn't one. There is an escalation of 21,000 US forces and there is a wartime spending bill requesting $94.2 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as of today, there isn't even a hint of what the President believes we need-an exit strategy. The Appropriations Committee is expected to dutifully vote out their bill Thursday and send it to the floor of the House for a vote next week.
I realize how hard it would be for Congressional Democrats to require the Obama administration to develop an exit strategy as a condition for continued war funding. After all, this is our guy, right? The last thing our guy needs is a Democratic Congress second guessing, making demands, and putting conditions on the war funding.
But this is exactly what we and the administration need precisely because he is our guy.
Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, we want and need President Obama to succeed. The very real prospect of the United States embedded in an endless war in Afghanistan would undermine everything this administration is trying to do while imperiling the very Congressional Democrats President Obama needs to move his agenda. This is exactly the right time to engage the administration in a respectful but critical discussion about where this military escalation is leading us.
Sending tens of thousands of more U.S. troops into Afghanistan-without a plan to get them out-is a bad idea for many reasons.
First off, the ink on the President's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan wasn't even dry before the Pentagon acknowledged that it already has a request in to the administration for an additional 10,000 troops. What's worse, there are indications the Pentagon has even more requests waiting in the wings.
The fact is, there are simply not enough U.S. soldiers to secure Afghanistan. Estimates as to what would be required range for 200,000 to 600,000 troops. And, don't look to our NATO allies to be of any help. The leader of Canada's Liberal Party told me last week that the only way Canada citizens would support sending any troops was if there was a clear exit strategy with a date certain for their withdrawal. As a result, all Canadian soldiers will be on their way home by 2011.
Those of us who live on this side of the border should be demanding the same from our political leaders.
The lack of an exit strategy is already making things worse in Afghanistan. Failing to say when and how we will remove our forces is playing into the hands of Taliban leaders who are using the presence of our troops on Afghanistan soil-and the announced escalation-as their most powerful recruitment tool. The New York Times reports that the escalation has mended fences between the otherwise fractious leadership of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban who announced that they are joining forces to fight the new troops as they arrive.
A BBC/ABC public opinion poll of Afghans reveals that fully 80% of the population is opposed to an escalation of American troops. Many of those who are shooting at our soldiers are not jihadists; they are proud Afghans who are famously sensitive to the presence of foreign forces on their soil.
The lack of an exit strategy also works against President Obama's regional strategy-outreach to the neighboring nations who have zero interest in a Taliban dominated Afghanistan because it would threaten their national security as much, if not more, than our own. How likely will China, Russia and particularly Iran be to join the U.S. if the outcome might be tens of thousands of U.S. troops on their border?
We need Congress to step up now and help prevent what has now become "Obama's War" from turning into a quagmire that undermines, if not destroys, the critically important agenda the President is fighting to pass here at home.
We need to step up too. We can start by contacting Members of Congress and urging them not to succumb to a vote-now, ask questions later approach to war funding even if it is our guy who is asking for it. We need a critical check-and-balance before it is too late to stop an endless war in Afghanistan.
The war spending bill is on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.
- Posted in
43 Comments so far
Show AllThere is an escalation of 21,000 US forces and there is a wartime spending bill requesting $94.2 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as of today, there isn't even a hint of what the President believes we need-an exit strategy.
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The exit strategy includes many more years of $94.2 billion contracts. Understand?
hey the good thing about no exit plans is that you can never be overdue to leave
the white man hates the world and wants to destroy it starting with the non-whites
what else is new
war and death
let's hope the afghan folly leads to the destruction of the republic as it did for the soviets
the world would be a better place
that's for sure
All of DC should be sent to Afghanistan and made to live under the rain of for profit USA "smart" Bombs
President Obama got bad advice in escalating in Afghnistan. Our bombing is killing hundreds of civilians and turning the Afghan people against us. War costs may divert us from universa health care, improved education etc. Quagmire again???
The United States has been in Afghanistan almost eight years and still, as Mr. Andrews points out, has no intention of leaving. Perhaps the supine Congress believes the rhetoric of the Vietnam era which is that the U.S. has somehow seen "the light at the end of the tunnel" or that the Americans are ready "to turn the corner." The Americans do not seem to realize that there is no light at the end of the tunnel because each time they attempt to turn a corner an Afghan freedom fighter will be there with a rifle firing at them and planting roadside bombs in an effort to try and inform the Americans that they are not wanted in their country.
It is difficult to know who is more culpable, Obama and his administration for keeping the soldiers in Afghanistan or Congress for not cutting off the funds which would then effectively end the occupation. As Tom Andrews accurately observes, the only way to subjugate the Afghans is to send in hundred of thousands of more soldiers into that war-torn country. But since the military is already stretched so thin that is unlikely to happen. It would seem that Obama has two choices. Either bring back back the military draft or keep enforcing the stop loss policy.
For those who live on the West Coast there will be a rally this Saturday at noon [May 9] to support the members of the IVAW [Iraq Veterans Against the War] who wish to focus on the military's heinous stop loss policy outside the Army's largest base on the West Coast at Fort Lewis, Wa [Exit 122 at Interstate 5]. An appropriate song to rally the troops may be that old standard from the 1960s- Fixing To Die Rag [Next Stop Vietnam]- by Country Joe and the Fish but with a slight variation:
And its one, two, three,
what are we fighting for.
Don't ask me I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Afghanistan.
Excellent news. The DOJ has decided not pursue its case against Lt. Ehren Watada. He expects to be released soon from the military and has plans to attend law school. If only more soldiers would follow Watada's example by refusing to take part in the illegal, unjust and idiotic occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://www.vfp109rcc.org/jod_drops_case_against_watada.htm
odoco
Thanks for the great news Erroll. Watada is one of the few heroes of this war - and precisely because he refused to fight in it. I was in Seattle when he gave his speech and consider it to be one of the seminal moments in modern American history. His speech should be mandatory instruction in every government and history class in this country.
Odoco
I was at the banquet dinner at the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle in 2006 when he gave his speech and told myself and other veterans that:
"The oath we take swears allegiance not to one man but to a document of principles and laws designed to protect the people. Enlisting in the military does not relinquish one's right to seek the truth-neither does it excuse one from rational thought nor the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. 'I was only following orders' is never an excuse."
If only those in the military would finally wake up and realize that they, like I and hundreds of thousands of others in Vietnam, are being used by their government for the most nefarious of reasons
Veterans for Peace National office did have DVD sets of this convention for sale - those of you interested might check there. I used the DVD in classrooms and students were spellbound by it - by Watada's sincerity and his courage. The way to win this war - the one here at home against ignorance and stupidity and ideology - is to educate our children.
Personally, I think President Obama is just trying to hold on desperately in Afghanistan and hope fervently that it doesn't go beyond America's (and his) control, or else he'll be a one-term president.
The problem with such a strategy is that it effectively surrenders the initiative to the Taliban, who can then engage, disengage and evade at will, and draw the war out, and (so they hope) exhaust and bankrupt the USA as they did the Soviets in the 1980s. They'll also be looking for an opportunity to inflict a "Black Hawk Down"-style defeat on the Americans; one that demoralizes the higher-ups in Washington and leads to ultimate withdrawal.
PaulfromGA - You are dead right about the myopia of the Obama administration's apparent escalation strategy in Afghanistan, and how it plays right into the Taliban and local warlords' hands. Note, too, that sucking the western infidel armies into endless warfare in Muslim lands is Osama bin Laden and Zwahiri's strategic goal for Al Qaeda.
As to your first point, I question the underlying partisan political assumption.
True, if there were a Dien Bien Phu/Blackhawk Down type military fiasco in Afghanistan, the GOP would savage Barack Obama for being a wimpish Commander in Chief. I think, however, Obama's at an even greater risk of being a one-termer if, three years from now, we are still bogged down in Af/Pak, taking casualties and being bled dry like the Soviets were.
The left wing of the Democratic base will bolt to a third party or stay home. Any plausible Republican challenger will run on a platform of turning the Afghanistan war over to a competent new Commander in Chief who will do things right and bring us victory. Afghanistan would be for Obama what Vietnam was for LBJ.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill 2:26 ------- Rashid's "Decent into Chaos" is the definitive read for AfPak.
In it you learn that ninety percent of Bush's policy in Afghanistan after defeating the Talibs, even after Karzai became president was to give great sums of money to the Warlords through the CIA.
And Bill it sickens me that people analize the bloodshed on the merits and probabilities of re elections instead of on Peace, Justice, and Prosperity.
Satan probably thinks he is a good guy.
Paul 10:23 This might come as a shock but when you slaughter 150 innocents,things are OUT OF CONTROL.
Stop making excuses for another heartless USA president and TAKE TO THE STREETS NOW !!
Hollbroke says just like Cheney did that an exit strategy would benefit the resistance.
Obama will continue killing innocents with bombs looking for unknown mystery men the CIA tell him are planning attacks on the USA.
The reason they don't know who these folks are and where they are hiding is because it would be the same as looking for those who hate Israel's policies (the other side of the war coin) and if they had to bomb homes to find them they would have to bomb most of the homes in the World.
Obama is not seeking peace now, he is widening the long un-winnable endless war.
The Global CIA infested central Banking and Corporate structure is the root problem everywhere.
Jim Glover - good analysis: another reason we will never leave, tied to your banking and corporate synthesis, is the fact that these are simply 'resource' wars, and as long as capitalism exists, wars will be fought over control of wealth - in whatever form. If we leave the area - China and Russia move in. So - we stay, continue to kill innocent people in our quest to militarily and economically control the planet. And as for all the Taliban now rising up against us - we will see their numbers swell exponentially in the near future; it won't be that people will believe in their dogma, but they will see them as freedom fighters against a foreign invader - I believe it's all in the history books - evidently our foreign policy people are too stupid to read - or profit has become the driving force behind our collective inhumanity.
I think we all know the answer to that.
This is part question to you, part query of the "moderators" of Common Dreams.
Are there TWO Jim Glovers, one of whom wrote this trenchant analysis of the futility of Obama's "plans" (really non-plans) for Afghanistan; the second who, during the late presidential campaign and afterwards has beaten up on any of us who dared suggest that we need an "exit strategy" for the two-party system, in the form of a more viable 3rd party; this Jim Glover being the one who says it takes 50 million people to elect a president, ergo we should ignore the "fringe" candidates?
If there are two Jim Glovers, I would use this fact to urge CD to exercise some control over people's selection of posting names, not authorizing a new use of a name which is already "taken." It's bad enough that, in trying to carry on dialogues with one another, we don't even know one another's identities or biographical details, except as individual posters care to reveal them, giving this whole posting exercise a bit of a "shouting in the wind" atmosphere that some have complained about.
If these two Jim Glovers are one person, my question is to you (and you can answer it on this string or send it to me personally if you're the one JG that I know, and I believe you have my e-mail): how do you manage to maintain these two very different personas under the same skin? We all have our moods or different sides of ourselves, of course, but seldom will you see this range of apparently discrepant perspectives in the same person. If there's a way of reconciling them, it might be instructive to the struggle of other people to come to some synthesis of the admitted complexity and confusion of the world around us. So please enlighten us, or me at least.
Well Jerry old pal,
There were two Oswalds, Two Bush's and there is a jim.glover in the military who sends me viruses, but Maybe some Phil Ochs type double personality caught me when I voted for Obama while pleading for a third party movement to get together instead of splitting their votes, but alas my fear and hatred O the bush CIA reign of terror (made possible by the JFK cover-up)
I succumbed to my hope that Obama would be safer for the planet than the other guy.
OK, Jerry you nailed me but for now, this jim.glover has declared .... I have sinned but i won't Hang myself.
Thanks for the response, Jim. I understand you a little better now. Jerry
Well that is also a good analysis.
The only thing I differ with is that if we have eliminate capitalism, before we can have more peace, we will never have peace because all systems are mixed.
I don't want to see wars fought over what these isms are or having isms that everyone has to agree on, before we can have progress and build a better world.
isms like labels just tend to divide the people and dismiss all who don''t agree with an ideology or sets of analysis.
Your Secret Socialist.
Back at you Jim - and I agree. I usually try to stay away from labeling, but did label capitalism in my last post. The reality, in whatever system rules at any given time, is the quality, humanity, compassion and intelligence of the ruling class the dominates that system.
My greatest fear, the dread I awaken with each and every morning, is that this world is becoming rapidly less humane and compassionate, and that those personality types that thrive in such hostile, controlling and militaristic societies make decisions for us all.
Yes odoco, ...Maybe our condition is a test for us so that as we decline materially, we are forced to rise up spiritually and treat everyone as we would like to be treated.
As governments fail, the energy of the people (the real government) becomes necessary.
But first we must destroy TV!
Why bother with an exit strategy when you know damn well you're never, ever, getting out of there? . . . until your empire crumbles, as it is certain to do.
I shall leap up again and shout again that it's all about the 'Stupid War'.
This is my new term for the 'formerly known as War on Terror and sometimes as Global War on Terror but those terms aren't used anymore and we need a new name' war.
There is no exit strategy in Afghanistan because nobody can explain how to reach the military goal set into writing by our moronic and despicable Congress, who willingly succumbed to the Bush/Cheney warmongers and their lies, deceits and patriotic blackmail.
This goal, which bears repeating, is 'preventing future terrorism' by our enemies. Nobody can explain how that can be achieved. There is no victory possible in the Stupid War.
Until America understands this and pressures the idiots in Congress (or better yet, replaces them) in order to revoke the madness they set in motion, there will be no exit - only more of the same until the inevitable catastrophe.
Sun Tzu - No nation ever benefited from a long war.
Pentagon's new name for GWOT - The long war.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Could be the next Movie Hit.... on Utube!
Great Post.
Americans are a very violent people through and through, but the justifications for it vary, usually in the form of phony religious 'morality,' or so-called preemptive self-defense. To end it, we must see how and why we are buying into this farce (if we are). The news shows the tears from mothers of those killed in combat, but those same mothers (and sometimes wives) no doubt felt a surge of pride for having a son (or husband) in the military. Many do not see how they contribute to the whole of it, and that is perhaps the real tragedy.
Anybody heard of Major General Smedley D. Butler? USMC Retired Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient? He wrote a book which you can read on line. O'Bummer oughtta read it. From it I quote:
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides."
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
The time for American troops in Afghanistan has long passed. It is now time to equip those for whom a Taliban takeover would be a bad rehash of recent history: the Hazaras, Uzbeks, & Tadjiks. As long as the idea of Afghanistan being a central unified state persists, the problems remain.
Perhaps the idea of ANY country being a "central unified state" is a bad one, NateW, and not just in Afghanistan.
That's quite the overly broad brush stroke there. Central unified states tend to go somewhat smoothly when there is a highly homogeneous population (Japan is an example of that). They generally do not when there is a non-homogeneous population, and the perception (and often the reality) is that one or two particular ethnic or religious groups holds the levers of political, economic, & military power, while the others are disadvantaged. The recent examples of this this are abundant: the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, the majority of Sub-Saharan Africa, & the subject of this thread, Afghanistan, among others. It should also be noted that there are successful examples of multi-ethnic states whom co-exist with a modicum of peace: Belgium (separation noises from Flemish nationalists aside), Switzerland, & South Africa immediately come to mind.
It would be better for Afghanistan to once again become a unified state than for the USA in this state remain one.
IMAGINE:
1. All that war money had been spent in the Middle East on irrigation, schools, hospitals, and the like.
2. Pakistan (and Afghanistan and Irak) had become prosperous.
3. The people had begun to demand democratic participation in their political and economic systems.
3. The ordinary Taliban supporters had decided that it was better to be prosperous. They had decided to send their kids to school, and had abandoned their armed struggle.
4. The Taliban leaders, responsible for all that violence, had been tried in legally constituted courts.
5. Those in the U.S. administration responsible for indiscriminate killing, torture, corruption, and other violence had been tried in legally constituted courts.
WOULD THE WORLD HAVE BEEN A SAFER PLACE?
It occurs to me that 9-11 resulted from the studious neglect by the Bush administration of timely information that terrorists were preparing the attacks of 9-11. And that out of that neglect came the idea that we need to launch a war on the other side of the world to kill the terrorists.
"Washington, D.C., 12 April 2004 - President Bush on Saturday, 10 April 2004, became the first sitting president ever to release publicly even a portion of his Daily Brief from the CIA. The page-and-a-half section of the President's Daily Brief from 6 August 2001, headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," had generated the most contentious questioning in last week's testimony by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice before the commission investigating the September 11th attacks. Dr. Rice continued to insist that the Brief did not amount to a real warning, while several commissioners seemed to think otherwise." The President's Daily Brief, By Thomas S. Blanton.
Richard Clarke, Bush's counterterrorism advisor at the time, had tried to carry out his responsibilities in the months leading up to 9-11, but was given short shrift by the administration. In his 2004 testimony to the 9-11 Commission, he said, "The Bush Administration saw terrorism policy as important but not urgent, prior to 9-11. The difficulty in obtaining the first Cabinet level (Principals) policy meeting on terrorism and the limited Principals' involvement sent unfortunate signals to the bureaucracy about the Administration's attitude toward the al Qida threat."
This has never passed the sniff test, where this GWOT is concerned.
The Missing Exit Strategy for Afghanistan--Why would you have an "exit strategy" from a place you never intend to leave? Has the United States "exited" Germany, Japan, Korea, Cuba, the United Kingdom, etc? Why? Because we have decided that we will be an imperialist empire and who can stop us from our desire?
When you stop making a liberal apology (like Tom Andrews)and start making a radical analysis you arrive closer to the truth of the matter.
Poet
"Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, we want and need President Obama to succeed. The very real prospect of the United States embedded in an endless war in Afghanistan would undermine everything this administration is trying to do while imperiling the very Congressional Democrats President Obama needs to move his agenda. "
Seeing this kind of propaganda here on CD is just insulting. The war should be ended not because it can't be won, but because it is immoral and illegal (nevermind the UN). As for Obama's domestic agenda, does the author really expect us to support a rapidly expanding police state, investment in coal and nuclear energy, "No Child Left Behind", NAFTA, a lack of health care and social services, and the largest transfer (theft) of wealth from the public to the private sector in the history of capitalism? No thanks.
US master global strategy: KILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then steal everything.
We cannot leave until the oil pipeline is built from Central Asia across Afghanistan.
All the Taliban had to do in August 2001, was agree to the Unocal representative's
offer to build the pipeline.
Pipeline = NO 9/11
Pipeline = No US invasion/bombing of Afghanistan in November 2001
Pretty simple
BTW Karzai was the Unocal rep who escorted the Taliban leadership to Houston in August 2001. Less than two weeks after their refusal, 9/11 occurred.
Jean-Paul Sartre knew that there was "No Exit" in 1944.
America's self inflicted prison has no lock on the door.
We're at the point between the "roman republic" and "roman empire."
"Roaming empire" fits.
Bombs and guns never have, nor will they ever win 'peace.' On the contrary, war begets more war with periods of an armed truce in between. Is an armed truce peace? Hardly. It merely allows a buildup for another outbreak of violence. Attacking Afghanistan after 911 felt good because it gave us an object for our revenge, but look at the result: the Taliban is returning with a vengeance in Pakistan. How long before our sworn enemies get access to nukes? Our wars of vengeance are accelerating that result.
The author is wrong. Unless he drastically changes course, Barack Obama will exit the White House on 20 January 2013, having lost the Democratic primaries and thus the nomination for a second term. The American public thought it had put hawkishness, disregard for human rights law and the Constitution, and corrupt cronyism behind, only to find it cropping up sooner in Obama's administration than in Bush's. The progressive and moderate Democrats who made Obama the nominee and president are patient, but not stupid.
e
Let's do the math, here.
Obama claims to exit from Iraq, but leaves 50,000+ troops on the ground plus 150,000 or so contracted mercenaries.
200,000 personnel doth not an exit make.
Now, while he's sending another 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, I am to believe that he meant to exit, because he says so.
This is not complicated: No, Obama is not "our guy," if "we" refers to Americans, just because that "we" resides within the borders of the USA and he participates in running that country. He does not intend to leave Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq in any way inconsistent with the subjugation of those countries to American imperial might. Therefore his success involves the extension of US occupation, not its end or reduction.
It may be good form in academic debate to presume that an opponent speaks sincerely, but it makes for bad institutional analysis.